Cricket Tales

*The studio that led this project is now called Then Try This - you can find more up to date information on Cricket Tales on their new website*

In a secret field in Northern Spain, hundreds of cricket burrows are monitored using CCTV. This is the first long-term study on the behaviour of wild insects, run by the Wild Crickets research group at the University of Exeter.

Cricket Tales is a citizen science project, developed in collaboration between FoAM and the Wild Crickets researchers. By tagging events in the cricket CCTV videos, players contribute directly to research which will determine whether crickets have individual personalities. Cricket Tales is installed live at the Eden Project, on our permanent screens in the Invisible Worlds building, and you can also play online here.

The results will tell us whether some crickets are more active in the morning, while others are more active at night. This tells us how flexible their lifestyles are, and how insects might cope as our climate changes. At the end of each game play, the latest results are displayed, including the data just contributed.

You can access the code here. The project is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.